2023-11-03 15:19:05
Gaza…headless children and surgeries without anesthesia
Jabalia, north of Gaza City, was hit by Israeli air strikes on Thursday, for the third day in a row, while doctors treating victims described nightmarish scenes of operating without basic supplies or anesthesia. Dr. Hossam Abu Safia, director of the pediatric ward at Kamal Adwan Hospital, where many of the injured were taken in Jabalia, said that the majority of those arriving are children, many of whom have suffered severe burns or lost limbs.
Abu Safiya added that the hospital received, on Tuesday, following the first raid that took place in Jabalia, regarding 40 non-survivors, and 250 others with injuries. The numbers were almost identical on Wednesday, when another attack occurred. On Thursday, an attack destroyed a UN school that was being used as a shelter, and sent another wave of casualties, including 10 dead and 80 wounded.
“I have never seen such bad injuries in my life,” Dr. Abu Safiya said Thursday by phone, adding: “We saw children without heads.”
A child is being treated at Kamal Adwan Hospital following she was injured in a bombing on a United Nations hospital in Jabalia on Thursday (AP)
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which runs the school, said that the school was among 4 of its shelters housing regarding 20,000 people that were damaged during the past 24 hours. It was reported that 20 people were killed in the Jabalia shelter, in addition to 3 people in other attacks on the Beach and Bureij camps. The Israeli military said that in its strikes on Jabalia it was targeting Hamas leaders who played key roles in the attacks on October 7, which Israeli officials said killed more than 1,400 people. The army also said that Hamas has an extensive tunnel network in Jabalia.
Dr. Abu Safiya, for his part, said he was working with a colleague in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit – one of two units that still had electrical power amid a severe fuel shortage – when victims from Jabalia began arriving on Wednesday. He added that when they rushed to the emergency room to provide assistance, his colleague was surprised to see that two of her children were among the dead. He said her two sons, aged 9 and 7, were killed in the house, along with several of her siblings and relatives. Then he said: “We work in a place where we expect that at any moment our children, spouses, siblings or friends will be torn to pieces.” He added that some of the children were not identified due to the severity of their injuries. The hospital morgue was so full that people were stacking bodies on top of each other.
Two girls cry in grief over the victims in Khan Yunis on Friday (Archyde.com)
Dr. Abu Safiya continued: “We wish to die. “It is easier than seeing the horrific scenes we are witnessing.” He later added: “Live images are broadcast to the whole world of people torn to pieces, of women and children being killed, for what? What mistake did they make? He added that the hospital, which is located in the city of Beit Lahia, north of Jabalia, suffers from a severe shortage of medical supplies, like the rest of the hospitals in the Gaza Strip. With no anesthesia, doctors would operate on people with severe injuries using over-the-counter painkillers such as paracetamol to help relieve the pain. The doctor added that they were using vinegar and chlorine to disinfect the wounds.
Dr. Abu Safiya also said: “Children’s cries during surgical operations can be heard from the outside. “We perform surgeries on people’s skulls without anesthesia.” He added that doctors and nurses were using flashlights on their phones to work in the dark. Because the severe fuel shortage meant that the hospital’s generators were unable to operate only two departments – the neonatal intensive care unit and the pediatric emergency room, where 12 children were on ventilators. He added that if the fuel runs out, “the hospital will turn into a mass grave.”
A Palestinian woman survived an Israeli bombing at a hospital in Khan Yunis on Friday (AP)
Hours earlier, Dr. Ashraf Al-Qudra, spokesman for the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza, had lifted the body of a dead child wrapped in a shroud at a press conference from Al-Shifa Hospital, describing the growing number of deaths. The ministry said that more than 9,000 people have been killed since the start of the ongoing Israeli bombing of Gaza, including more than 3,000 children. Many are still missing or buried under the rubble.
Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta, a British-Palestinian plastic surgeon who volunteered in the burns unit at Shifa Hospital, said the hospital — the largest in Gaza — had received regarding 70 patients from the raids on Jabalia since Tuesday, and many had no homes to return to. He added that medical workers were overstretched to the breaking point, and normally preventable deaths were beginning to rise. He said that every surgery turns into an arduous and difficult experience trying to use the least possible amount of available resources.
An injured child in Deir al-Balah Hospital in the southern Gaza Strip (AP)
The Ministry of Health in Gaza announced that 16 out of 35 hospitals in the Strip have been out of service due to damage or lack of energy. The maternity ward at Al-Shifa Hospital was being used to treat the wounded, and pregnant mothers were transferred to Al-Hilu Hospital, which the ministry said was damaged in the bombing on Wednesday night.
The loss of communications with Gaza City on Thursday led to the inability of ambulances and rescue workers to find the wounded, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Ahmed Sardah, a Jabalia resident whose home was damaged in Wednesday’s strike, was able to send a quick message during a fleeting moment of internet connection before losing connection once more. “The situation is tragic” in the neighborhood, he said. He said in a Facebook post that he was able to write on Thursday: “I wish friends and relatives who are abroad might tell us what is going on around us instead of asking us how we are doing, because without the Internet and phone lines, all we hear are air strikes and bombs. Where, how, why, and who? “None of us knows.”
Dr. Ghassan Al-Khatib, a political science professor at Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank, said Jabalia — which bears the name of both a town and a refugee camp — has been known as a bastion of resistance to the Israeli occupation for years. He added that the first intifada, which lasted from 1987 until 1993, began there following an Israeli vehicle ran over the camp residents. He added that their funeral turned into demonstrations that spread to the Balata refugee camp in the West Bank city of Nablus and other places.
Tamara Al-Rifai, an official at UNRWA, said in an online press conference on Thursday that the agency believes that regarding 30,000 of the 116,000 residents of Jabalia camp did not leave their places following Israel ordered them to evacuate under the threat of bombing last month. It was not clear whether all the displaced people went to the south, as directed, or to other areas in northern Gaza. Displaced people across Gaza have flocked to hospitals, hoping for a greater chance at safety. Kamal Adwan Hospital also includes more than 3,000 displaced people. Dr. Abu Safiya is one of them, and he barely sleeps. He said that sometimes he would go into an empty room, close the door and sob. “These are people who had dreams, they had lives, they had futures,” he said. “It’s all over.”
* New York Times service
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